MEMOIR 


OF 

WILLIAM  WHITWELL  GREENOUGH. 

BY 

BARRETT  WENDELL. 

THE  LIBRARY  OF  TH£ 

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MEMOIR 


OF 

WILLIAM  WHITWELL  GREENOUGH. 


BY 

BARRETT  WENDELL. 


[Reprinted  from  the  Proceedings  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical 
Society,  February,  1901.] 


CAMBRIDGE: 
JOHN  WILSON  AND  SON. 
SEtttberstlg  I3ress. 

1901. 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2017  with  funding  from 

University  of  Illinois  Urbana-Champaign  Alternates 


https://archive.org/details/memoirofwilliamwOOwend 


WILLIAM  WHITWELL  GREENOUGH. 


William  Whitwell  Greenough,  only  child  of  William 
and  Sarah  (Gardner)  Greenough,  was  born  in  Boston  on  the 
25th  of  June,  1818.  His  father,  a  merchant,  was  a  son  of  the 
Rev.  William  Greenough,  for  many  years  minister  of  Newton, 
and  traced  his  descent  through  Deacon  Thomas  Greenough,  a 
considerable  citizen  of  Boston  during  the  years  preceding  the 
Revolution,  and  through  Captain  John  Greenough,  who  in 
1726  commanded  the  Ancient  and  Honorable  Artillery  Com¬ 
pany,  from  Captain  William  Greenough,  the  emigrant,  who  is 
said  to  have  resided  at  the  North  End  of  Boston  before  1660, 
and  whose  death  and  burial  are  recorded  in  Sewall’s  Diary  for 
the  6th  of  August,  1693.  Sarah  Gardner,  the  mother  of  Mr. 
Greenough,  was  a  granddaughter  of  the  Rev.  Francis  Gardner, 
for  many  years  minister  of  Leominster,  and  was  a  grand-niece  of 
Dorothy  Quincy,  wife  of  the  celebrated  John  Hancock.  In  her 
later  years  this  lady,  then  doubly  widowed  by  the  death  of  her 
second  husband,  Captain  Scott,  was  accustomed  to  relieve  the 
monotony  of  her  childless  house  by  inviting  agreeable  young 
kinswomen  to  live  with  her,  and  making  suitable  matches  for 
them.  One  of  these  was  Sarah  Gardner,  who  accordingly 
came  from  Leominster  to  Boston,  and  whose  unusual  personal 
attractions  soon  won  the  heart  of  William  Greenough.  They 
were  married  from  Madam  Scott’s  house  on  the  23d  of  August, 
1817.  Their  only  child  was  thus  descended  on  both  sides  from 
families  who  during  the  palmy  days  of  Unitarianism  adhered  to 
the  old  Orthodox  faith. 

Though  few  particular  anecdotes  of  Mr.  Greenough’s  boy¬ 
hood  are  preserved,  it  is  remembered  that  he  was  at  one  time 


/oz. 


4 


troublesome  because  of  irrepressible  physical  activity.  Some 
consequent  accident  threatened  serious  lameness.  In  the  en¬ 
forced  repose  which  followed  he  took  to  voracious  reading,  and 
thus  early  displayed  that  aptitude  for  books  which  remained  so 
characteristic.  He  was  prepared  for  college  by  a  four  years’ 
course  at  the  Boston  Latin  School,  supplemented  by  a  fifth 
year  at  the  private  school  of  Mr.  Leverett,  who  chanced  at 
that  time  to  retire  from  the  mastership  of  the  old  public  school, 
and  took  with  him  certain  promising  pupils.  As  a  result,  to 
use  Mr.  Greenough’s  words, — 

“The  studies  of  the  Freshman  year  and  of  a  portion  of  the  Sopho¬ 
more  year  had  already  received  so  much  attention  at  school  that  my 
time  was  thrown  largely  open  to  other  pursuits  not  strictly  scholastic. 
In  consequence,  at  the  end  of  my  Sophomore  year,  under  the  peculiar 
regimen  of  the  college  which  rated  conduct  higher  than  scholarship,  I 
was  dismissed,  without  a  word  of  kindness  or  warning,  for  ‘  wayward 
and  exceptionable  ’  conduct,  for  an  interval  of  three  months.  This  was 
voluntarily  lengthened  to  a  year  at  Andover,  Massachusetts,  where  I 
specially  pursued  Whately’s  Rhetoric  and  Logic  and  the  modern  lan¬ 
guages,  for  the  latter  of  which  I  had  a  strong  inclination.  Returning 
to  college  and  entering  the  Senior  Class,  I  followed  especially  my  pre¬ 
ferred  tastes  in  the  study  of  Italian,  Spanish,  and  Portuguese,  in  the 
courses  of  study  of  Dr.  Bachi,  to  whose  eminent  learning,  large  ac¬ 
complishments,  and  masterful  suggestions  I  was  greatly  indebted.  I 
also  studied  German  with  Dr.  Follen.  Besides  these  courses  I  had 
been  privately  working  on  the  Anglo-Saxon.” 

It  is  characteristic  of  Mr.  Greenough  that,  despite  this  un¬ 
usual  scholarly  enthusiasm,  he  possessed  such  social  qualities 
as  to  be  made,  in  1836,  a  member  of  the  Porcellian  Club.  He 
took  his  degree  at  Harvard  in  1837.  His  brief  record  of  the 
ensuing  year  or  two  is  more  expressive  than  any  paraphrase 
could  be :  — 

“  The  result  of  my  education  to  this  point  was  good  Latin  and  Greek 
scholarship,  a  good  knowledge  of  the  written  French,  and  a  fair  knowl¬ 
edge  of  German,  Italian,  and  Spanish.  I  had  also  in  my  senior  year 
compiled  a  grammar  of  Anglo-Saxon.  Besides  this,  I  wrote  the  lan¬ 
guage  (English)  with  sufficient  polish,  had  no  practice  as  a  speaker,  and 
no  practical  education,  for  every-day  use  and  life.” 

For  the  moment  every-day  life  failed  to  attract  him.  To 
use  his  own  words  again,  — 


5 


“  With  a  strong  desire  to  fit  myself  for  usefulness  in  the  languages, 
especially  Oriental,  I  went  to  Andover  for  the  year  succeeding  my 
graduation,  and  laid  a  foundation  in  three  or  four  of  these  tongues, 
with  a  view  to  a  professorship  in  a  Southern  college,  about  which  I  had 
been  sounded  by  my  kind  friend,  Mr.  John  Pickering,  one  of  the  most 
eminent  of  our  American  scholars,  and  for  which  due  preparation  was 
to  be  made  by  a  two  years’  residence  in  Germany.  After  some  reflec¬ 
tion,  I  concluded  that  the  result  would  be  more  satisfactory  if  I  engaged 
in  active  business,  with  a  view  of  accumulating  in  a  few  years  a  suffi¬ 
ciency  of  property  to  enable  one  to  retire  from  business  and  pursue  one’s 
taste  for  study  at  one’s  own  leisure.  Like  many  dreams  of  the  young 
and  inexperienced,  my  expectations  had  no  fulfilment,  and  the  story 
carries  its  appropriate  moral.” 

Yet  it  may  be  doubted  whether  the  complete  fulfilment  of 
his  youthful  expectations  could  have  brought  about  a  life  so 
useful  as  his  was  destined  to  be.  At  twenty  years  of  age 
his  scholarship  was  remarkable,  and  his  knowledge  of  human 
nature  far  from  extensive.  The  manner  in  which  he  proceeded 
to  extend  it  was  characteristic. 

On  the  16th  of  August,  1838,  according  to  his  brief  memo¬ 
randa,  — 

“  Entered  my  father’s  hardware  store,  14  Merchants’  Row.  Having 
previously  lived  a  scholarly  if  not  a  scholastic  life,  I  found  that  my  line 
of  thought  and  conversation  had  nothing  of  common  interest  with  the 
people  in  practical  life  who  were  getting  their  living  by  handicraft  or 
by  country  store-keeping.  And  for  the  purpose  of  being  among  them,  I 
first  went  to  board  at  No.  1 1  Elm  Street,  a  largely  frequented  tavern, 
where  I  gradually  mastered  the  general  points  of  country  store-keeping; 
and  then  in  the  winter  took  the  only  single  room  in  the  Lagrange  House 
in  Union  Street,  frequented  by  pedlers,  sea-faring  men,  etc.  After 
graduating  at  this  institution,  I  removed  to  the  American  House,  kept 
by  Mr.  Lewis  Rice,  in  Hanover  Street,  a  respectable  and  well-kept  hotel. 

“  In  my  communion  with  the  majority  of  the  people  who  make  up 
the  world  of  life,  this  education  was  of  more  practical  importance  than 
all  the  book-learning,  though  that  partially  accumulated  stock  of  knowl¬ 
edge  was  not  neglected  in  the  future.” 

This  future  proved  widely  and  variously  busy.  In  1840  he 
became  a  partner  of  his  father.  At  first,  however,  his  business 
cares  appear  to  have  been  light.  His  first  recorded  journey 
out  of  New  England  was  in  May,  1840,  when  he  went  to  Bal¬ 
timore  with  the  Boston  delegation  to  attend  the  ratification 


6 


meeting  of  the  nomination  of  General  Harrison  for  the  Presi¬ 
dency  ;  his  anecdotic  reminiscences  of  this  excursion  used  to 
indicate  that  the  personal  conduct  of  American  politicians 
sixty  years  ago  was  less  austere  than  is  sometimes  asserted  by 
pious  tradition.  In  December,  1840,  he  first  went  to  Europe, 
where — as  in  his  various  later  travels  abroad — he  industriously 
verified  the  details  to  which  guide-books  and  catalogues  di¬ 
rected  his  swift  and  accurate  attention.  In  April,  1841,  he 
returned  home.  There,  on  the  15th  of  the  following  June,  he 
was  married  to  Catherine  Scollay,  the  younger  daughter  of 
Charles  Pelham  Curtis,  of  Boston.  Of  the  six  children  who 
sprung  from  this  marriage,  four  survive :  William,  for  some 
years  past  resident  in  New  York  ;  Charles  Pelham,  of  the 
Boston  bar ;  Malcolm  Scollay,  now  of  Cleveland,  Ohio  ;  and 
Edith,  wife  of  Barrett  Wendell,  of  Boston.  The  two  other 
daughters  died  unmarried,  one  in  infancy. 

In  1848,  1845,  and  1847  his  business  involved  extended 
journeys  to  the  West,  then  a  region  where  travel  still  meant 
primitive  hardship.  From  1847  to  1849  he  was  a  member  of 
the  Common  Council  of  the  city  of  Boston,  an  office  which  he 
accepted  14  for  the  purpose  of  furthering  and  obtaining  the  in¬ 
troduction  of  a  water  supply  for  the  city.”  On  the  Fourth  of 
July,  1849,  he  delivered  the  annual  oration  by  which  the  city  is 
accustomed  officially  to  celebrate  the  anniversary  of  American 
Independence ;  his  subject  was  “  The  Conquering  Republic.” 
About  this  time  is  said  to  have  come  a  critical  incident  in  his 
career.  He  found  himself  on  such  personally  intimate  terms 
with  the  leaders  of  the  old  Whig  party  that  he  was  privately 
offered  a  nomination  for  Congress.  This  he  agreed  to  accept, 
on  condition  that  it  receive  the  unanimous  approval  of  the 
nominating  powers.  Unanimity  proved  wanting ;  and  al¬ 
though  he  remained  in  closely  confidential  relations  with  the 
elder  Whig  politicians  —  particularly  with  Mr.  Abbott  Law¬ 
rence  —  he  never  took  official  part  in  national  politics.  The 
importance  of  his  true  life-work  was  local.  In  1852  he  was 
put  in  charge  of  the  Boston  Gas-Light  Company ;  and  in  1856 
he  was  appointed  a  Trustee  of  the  Boston  Public  Library. 
The  career  of  double  civic  usefulness  thus  begun  continued 
unbroken  until  1888.  In  that  year  failing  health  compelled 
him  to  resign  from  the  Board  of  Trustees  of  the  Public 
Library,  of  which  for  the  preceding  twenty-two  years  he  had 


7 


been  president.  A  year  later  the  Boston  Gas-Light  Company 
passed  into  other  hands  than  those  of  the  owners  who  had  so 
long  managed  it  with  conscientious  solicitude  for  the  public 
good.  Mr.  Greenough’s  last  ten  years  were  passed  in  more 
and  more  invalid  retirement.  He  died  at  his  house  on  Marl¬ 
borough  Street,  in  Boston,  on  the  17th  of  June,  1899. 

From  1840  he  had  been  a  citizen  of  Boston  ;  but  for  some 
years  before  1864  he  had  passed  his  summers  at  Swampscott. 
Pleasant  memories  of  his  life  there  still  endure.  He  was  par¬ 
ticularly  fond  of  the  deep-sea  fishing  which  at  that  time  was 
held  a  diverting  sport,  and  which  attracted  to  our  coast  a 
number  of  Canadian  gentlemen,  eminent  in  the  commercial  and 
the  political  life  of  the  Dominion.  With  several  of  these  Mr. 
Greenough  contracted  lasting  friendship.  It  is  said  that  his 
gayety  was  the  life  of  many  a  Swampscott  fishing-party;  and 
it  is  certain  that  nothing  gave  him  more  pleasure  than  the 
occasional  visits  to  Canada  in  later  years  which  renewed  the 
associations  of  this  earlier  time.  In  1864  it  came  to  an  end  ; 
he  bought  the  old  Greenleaf  estate  in  Quincy.  Here  he  passed 
most  of  each  year  from  that  time  till  1888.  The  original  house 
he  replaced  by  the  large  and  generous  one  which  still  stands 
there ;  and  for  a  while  the  unusual  beauty  of  his  grounds, 
where  the  trees,  planted  years  ago  by  one  of  the  Greenleafs, 
are  various  and  noble,  greatly  interested  him.  So  did  the  far 
from  elaborate  gardening  which  he  found  within  his  means. 
Towards  the  end  of  his  life  at  Quincy,  however,  his  failing 
strength  showed  itself  in  neglect  of  these  matters  which 
had  once  afforded  him  such  wholesome  recreation.  He  finally 
removed  to  Boston  with  a  sense  of  relief. 

Among  the  clubs,  societies,  and  the  like  of  which  he  was  a 
member,  may  be  mentioned  the  American  Oriental  Society,  of 
which  in  1843  he  was  a  founder ;  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Society 
of  Harvard  College,  of  which  he  became  an  honorary  member 
in  1849 ;  the  Massachusetts  General  Hospital,  of  which  he  was 
a  Trustee  for  ten  years,  beginning  in  1856 ;  the  Provident  In¬ 
stitution  for  Savings,  with  which  his  connection  lasted  from 
1857  to  the  end ;  the  Boston  Museum  of  Fine  Arts,  of  which 
he  was  a  Trustee  from  1870  until  his  health  compelled  him  to 
relinquish  all  responsibilities ;  and  those  purely  social  bodies, 
the  Wednesday  Evening  Club,  the  Somerset  Club,  and  the 
Friday  Club,  of  Boston. 


8 


This  last  named,  a  dinner  club  peculiarly  congenial  to  Mr. 
Greenough,  was  founded  by  a  meeting  called  at  his  house 
on  Temple  Street,  on  the  21st  of  March,  1859.  The  origi¬ 
nal  members  were  Professor  Agassiz,  Mr.  Sidney  Bartlett, 
Judge  B.  R.  Curtis,  Mr.  Greenough,  Mr.  George  S.  Hillard, 
Mr.  Robert  M.  Mason,  Mr.  Charles  W.  Storey,  and  President 
Felton,  of  Harvard  College.  The  first  dinner  of  the  club  was 
held  at  the  Parker  House  on  the  1st  of  April,  1859.  A  record 
of  this  and  of  two  hundred  and  twenty  subsequent  dinners,  end¬ 
ing  with  the  28th  of  March,  1884,  exists  in  Mr.  Greenough’s 
handwriting.1  Among  the  later  members  of  the  club  who  no 
longer  survive  were  Professor  William  B.  Rogers,  Mr.  Henry 
P.  Sturgis,  Mr.  William  Amory,  Mr.  George  Ticknor,  Chief 
Justice  Bigelow,  Mr.  William  H.  Gardiner,  Mr.  William  Gray, 
Mr.  Charles  Francis  Adams,  and  Mr.  James  Russell  Lowell  ; 
and  among  the  guests  from  time  to  time  were  many  other  in¬ 
teresting  men.  Mr.  Greenough’s  notes  of  the  earlier  meet¬ 
ings  show  that  the  talk  was  apt  to  turn  on  political  matters 
and  occasionally  to  wax  warm  ;  his  later  entries  state  merely 
who  were  present.  The  last  dinner  he  recorded  was  one  where 
he  himself  was  host;  among  the  guests  were  President  Eliot, 
of  Harvard  College,  and  General  Walker,  President  of  the 
Massachusetts  Institute  of  Technology.  To  persons  familiar 
with  the  Boston  of  the  last  generation,  this  mere  list  of  names 
must  be  significant.  It  indicates  not  only  the  wide  range  of 
interest  in  public  affairs  which  Mr.  Greenough  always  main-, 
tained  and  the  general  social  qualities  in  which  he  delighted, 
but  also  his  incessant  interest  in  the  learning  which  at  first  he 
had  hoped  to  make  his  chief  occupation.  Though  Ins  ostensible 
duties  took  him  far  from  the  profession  of  education,  this  was 
never  far  from  his  sympathies;  and  it  is  believed  that  he  was 
frequently  consulted  by  the  friends  under  whose  care  the  educa¬ 
tion  of  New  England  prospered  during  the  years  of  his  maturity. 

On  April  10,  1879,  he  was  elected  to  the  Massachusetts 
Historical  Society.  The  ground  for  this  election  was  partly, 
no  doubt,  the  unusual  range  and  variety  of  his  antiquarian 
knowledge.  Among  his  busy  relaxations  was  an  eager  interest 
in  the  facts  of  New  England  history  and  genealogy,  concerning 
which  he  made  innumerable  memoranda  ;  for  one  thing,  he 
kept  an  interleaved  copy  of  the  Harvard  Triennial  Catalogue, 

1  This  record  is  in  the  possession  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 


9 


in  which  he  entered  with  punctilious  care  every  detail  which 
came  to  his  knowledge  about  every  man  whose  name  appeared 
in  those  pleasantly  barbarous  Latinized  columns.  Had  he 
been  merely  an  antiquarian,  however,  it  is  doubtful  whether 
the  Historical  Society  would  certainly  have  recognized  him. 
He  belongs  rather  to  that  group  of  its  members  who  owe  their 
selection  not  so  much  to  their  historical  scholarship  or  to  their 
writings  as  to  the  fact  that  their  public  services  have  made 
them  at  least  locally  memorable. 

Yet  in  one  sense  Mr.  Greenough  had  hardly  any  public 
career.  His  three  years  in  the  Common  Council,  at  the  time 
when  Boston  needed  a  water  supply,  comprise  all  his  precisely 
official  life.  What  made  him  essentially  a  public  servant  was, 
on  the  one  hand,  the  essentially  civic  character  of  the  corpora¬ 
tion  of  which  he  was  so  long  the  guiding  spirit,  and  on  the 
other  hand  the  incalculable  civic  importance  of  the  Public 
Library,  which  owes  so  much  of  its  present  dignity  to  his  wise, 
watchful,  unremitting  care. 

In  1852,  when  he  was  thirty-four  years  old,  the  Boston 
Gas-Light  Company,  a  corporation  with  a  capital  of  $500,000, 
found  itself,  by  reason  of  carelessness  on  the  part  of  its  practi¬ 
cal  manager,  in  a  somewhat  disturbing  condition.  Concerning 
the  manufacture  of  illuminating  gas,  Mr.  Greenough  at  that 
time  knew  hardly  anything.  His  remarkably  systematic  mental 
training,  however,  had  combined  with  his  impregnable  good 
sense,  his  accumulating  experience  of  general  affairs,  and  his 
knowledge  of  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men,  to  attract 
towards  him  the  attention  of  the  elderly  gentlemen  then  in 
control  of  the  corporation.  His  own  brief  memorandum  tells 
the  story  of  what  ensued  :  “  I  became  Treasurer,  with  the 
whole  management  of  their  business,  in  consultation  with  the 
Directors,  when  deemed  necessary  by  me.  In  the  continuation 
of  this  trust  to  the  close  of  1887,  the  paid  up  capital  of  the 
company,  after  thirty-five  }^ears,  is  $2, 500, 000.”  Early  in 
1889  the  property  was  sold  for  six  millions. 

These  figures  tell  the  story  of  a  civic  work  at  once  admira¬ 
ble  and  in  its  issue  somewhat  melancholy.  The  problem  which 
Mr.  Greenough  found  before  him  was  to  provide  the  large  and 
growing  city  of  Boston  with  adequate  illumination.  To  do 
tli is  required  not  only  administrative  and  financial  intelligence 
of  high  order,  but  also  studious  familiarity  with  an  increas- 


10 


ingly  technical  kind  of  manufacture,  and  in  addition  to  these, 
incessant  dealings  with  the  shifting  and  unstable  personages 
brought  by  annual  elections  into  temporary  control  of  the  city 
government.  These  widely  various  duties  he  performed  with 
unremittent  care  and  skill.  Boston  was  provided  with  a  system 
of  gas  lighting  which  in  its  day  was  among  the  best,  for  both 
quality  and  efficiency,  in  the  world.  The  property  and  the 
franchise  of  the  Gas-Light  Company,  meanwhile,  originally 
encumbered  and  of  somewhat  doubtful  value,  so  developed  as 
to  attract  the  cupidity  of  speculative  adventurers.  The  inevi¬ 
table  result  finally  came  ;  all  he  could  do  was  to  make  terms 
which  should  assure  the  fortune  of  his  stockholders.  His  own 
holdings  in  the  corporation  were  so  small  that,  except  for  a 
generous  present  voted  him  at  the  time  of  his  retirement,  he 
would  have  withdrawn  from  his  thirty-five  years  of  service 
little  richer  than  he  began  them.  For  many  of  those  years 
his  salary  was  only  four  thousand  dollars. 

It  was  probably  during  the  earliest  part  of  this  strictly 
business  career  that  one  of  Mr.  Greenough’s  most  significant 
traits  finally  declared  itself.  As  his  record  of  education  so 
pleasantly  indicates,  his  powers  matured  early.  In  con¬ 
sequence,  he  excited  much  friendly  interest  on  the  part  of 
men  far  older  than  he.  Apparently  he  found  the  accomplish¬ 
ments  of  these  gentlemen  more  sympathetic  than  the  less 
settled  characteristics  of  his  more  youthful  contemporaries. 
At  all  events,  by  the  time  when  he  was  thirty-five  years  of 
age,  his  most  intimate  personal  relations  were  generally  with 
men  old  enough  to  be  his  father.  This  fact  goes  far  to 
explain  the  evident  personal  solitude  of  his  later  life.  The 
generation  to  which  he  belonged  at  heart,  though  not  in 
years,  was  dead  long  before  his  days  of  fruitful  usefulness 
were  over. 

Among  the  elder  men  whose  friendship  he  thus  attracted 
was  Mr.  John  Pickering,  an  eminent  scholar  and  the  principal 
founder  of  the  American  Oriental  Society.  Of  these  founders 
Mr.  Greenough  was  the  last  survivor.  As  he  stated  in  his 
brief  notes  concerning  his  education,  his  early  intention  of  pre¬ 
paring  himself  for  a  professorship  of  languages  was  partly 
influenced  by  Mr.  Pickering’s  suggestions  ;  and  in  spite  of  the 
complete  change  in  Mr.  Greenough’s  purposes  his  friendship 
with  Mr.  Pickering  appears  to  have  lasted,  cordial  as  ever, 


11 


until  the  death  of  the  latter,  in  1846.  It  was  perhaps  through 
this  earlier  intimacy  that  a  few  years  later  Mr.  Greenough 
found  himself  drawn  into  such  close  and  enduring  personal 
relations  with  Mr.  George  Ticknor.  His  intimacy  with  Mr. 
Ticknor  was  certainly  the  circumstance  which  most  happily 
influenced  that  portion  of  his  career  which  proved  of  the  high¬ 
est  public  service.  This,  of  course,  was  his  admirable  and 
prolonged  management  of  the  Boston  Public  Library. 

So  considerable  and  comprehensive  a  civic  institution  as 
this  Library  must  owe  its  origin  and  development  to  widely 
diffused  public  spirit ;  to  speak  of  any  one  man  as  its  founder, 
then,  is  perhaps  unduly  to  neglect  others;  yet  as  one  con¬ 
siders  the  history  of  the  Public  Library,  it  seems  constantly 
more  certain  that  we  should  hardly  have  possessed  this  noble 
monument  without  the  generous,  far-seeing,  and  not  justly 
remembered  energy  and  persistency  of  Mr.  Ticknor.  His 
eminent  scholarship,  his  untiring  and  fruitful  labors  as  a 
literary  historian,  and  his  exceptional  social  career  abroad  and 
at  home,  are  matters  of  familiar  tradition.  So,  in  a  manner 
faintly  tinctured  with  humour,  are  some  personal  peculiarities 
which  prevented  him  from  enjoying  general  popularity.  What 
stands  in  danger  of  being  forgotten  is  his  life-long  purpose 
that,  so  far  as  lay  in  his  power,  the  widest  resources  of  learn¬ 
ing  and  culture  should  be  freely  open  to  every  human  being 
who  could  in  any  wise  benefit  by  them  or  enjoy  them.  No 
citizen  of  Boston  has  ever  done  a  work  at  heart  more  unre¬ 
servedly  popular  than  that  which  thus  proceeded  from  a  man 
often  thought  unduly  limited  in  his  relations  with  other 
people. 

The  formal  founding  of  the  Public  Library  occurred  in 
1852.  Of  the  Trustees  then  appointed  the  most  eminent  were 
George  Ticknor  and  Edward  Everett.  In  that  veiy  year, 
however,  Mr.  Everett  was  called  away  from  New  England  by 
his  appointment  to  the  office  of  Secretary  of  State  ;  and  until 
1854,  when  the  Library  was  actually  opened,  its  organization 
lay  chiefly  in  the  hands  of  Mr.  Ticknor.  The  story  of  his 
faithful  work  is  adequately  set  forth  in  Miss  Ticknor’s  pious, 
sympathetic  Life  of  her  father.1  This  excellent  book,  how¬ 
ever,  touches  lightly  on  his  chief  limitation,  of  which  he  was 
probably  aware  ;  he  lacked  the  kind  of  tact  which  seems  need- 

1  Vol.  ii.  chap.  xv. 


12 


ful  for  successful  dealings  with  such  men  as  hold  office  in 
modem  American  cities.  He  possessed,  on  the  other  hand, 
both  the  enlightened  culture  which  enabled  him  to  plan  the 
scholarly  future  of  the  Public  Library,  and  the  generous  pub¬ 
lic  spirit  which  enabled  him  equally  to  foresee  and  to  prepare 
its  more  popular  features.  What  the  Library  clearly  needed 
was  a  whole-souled  Trustee  who  should  combine  these  traits, 
so  fully  developed  in  Mr.  Ticknor,  with  experienced  power  of 
conciliating  the  every-day  citizens  who  chanced  to  hold  civic 
authority. 

It  seems  doubtful  whether  in  1856  there  was  any  citizen  of 
Boston  more  fitted  to  meet  this  need  than  Mr.  Greenough. 
At  thirty-eight  years  of  age,  his  powers  were  mature  ;  and 
they  had  grown  to  maturity  amid  surroundings  which  made 
him  personalty  familiar  not  only  with  a  wide  range  of  learning 
but  also  with  almost  every  aspect  of  New  England  life.  He 
was  born  Orthodox,  and  in  youth  attended  the  church  of  Dr. 
Lyman  Beecher  ;  he  was  educated  partly  at  Harvard  and 
partly  at  Andover ;  he  was  a  Porcellian  man  and  the  compiler 
of  an  unpublished  Anglo-Saxon  grammar;  he  was  married  to 
a  Unitarian  of  King’s  Chapel ;  he  was  a  widely  accomplished 
linguist  and  a  learned  local  antiquarian  ;  his  travels  had  made 
him  acquainted  both  with  Europe  and  with  our  own  Western 
States;  his  confidential  friendship  with  leaders  of  the  old  Whig 
party  had  afforded  him  considerable  knowledge  of  national  poli¬ 
tics  ;  for  years,  meanwhile,  he  had  been  engaged  in  a  business 
which  involved  close  contact  with  people  of  the  plainer  sort ;  he 
had  been  a  member  of  the  City  government ;  and  his  more 
recent  business  had  kept  him  in  frequent  relations  with  sub¬ 
sequent  governments  of  the  City.  He  was  conspicuously  free 
from  the  temptations  which  beset  those  too  freely  endowed 
with  the  gifts  of  imagination  or  humour;  he  was  equally  con¬ 
spicuous  for  indomitable  energy  and  for  illimitable  common- 
sense.  Finally,  he  was  heart  and  soul  interested  in  the  public 
work  of  which  he  now  became  an  almost  life-long  Trustee. 

His  first  considerable  service  to  it  he  was  fond  of  remember¬ 
ing.  When,  in  1855,  Mr.  Joshua  Bates  offered  his  second 
great  endowment  to  the  Public  Library,  a  number  of  scholars 
and  experts  were  consulted  as  to  what  books  might  most 
desirably  be  bought.  Among  these  Mr.  Greenough,  either 
just  before  his  appointment  as  Trustee  or  just  after  it,  was 


13 


requested  to  make  some  suggestions.  He  took  up  his  pencil, 
and  wrote  in  a  line  or  two  that  the  Library  ought  to  possess 
the  County  Histories  of  England.  The  suggestion  is  said  to 
have  appealed  instantly  to  the  sympathies  of  Mr.  Bates.  At 
all  events,  it  has  resulted  in  a  collection  of  English  local  his¬ 
tories  unequalled  in  America.  Mr.  Greenough  never  rendered 
the  Public  Library  but  one  more  signal  single  service  ;  this  was 
years  later  when,  as  president,  he  negotiated  the  purchase  of  the 
Barton  Library,  which  enriched  Boston  with  one  of  the  most 
important.  Shakspearean  collections  in  the  world.  Incalcu¬ 
lably  his  chief  services,  however,  were  no  such  single  ones  as 
these  ;  they  were  embraced  in  the  innumerable  details  of  his 
daily  care  for  the  Library  during  his  thirty-two  years  of  office 
there.  For  a  full  twenty-two  of  these  j7ears  he  was  president 
of  the  Board  of  Trustees. 

The  story  of  the  growth  and  development  of  the  Library 
during  this  period  may  be  read  in  its  official  reports.  In  1856, 
when  he  first  became  a  Trustee,  the  Library  had  been  little 
more  than  a  generously  endowed  experiment,  favored  alike  b}^ 
the  public  spirit  of  the  City  authorities  and  by  the  personal 
enthusiasm  of  scholarly  and  beneficent  private  citizens  ;  in 
1888,  when  he  relinquished  the  presidency,  it  was  an  institu¬ 
tion  of  learning  so  firmly  established  and  so  widely  recognized 
that  it  had  served  as  a  model  for  countless  others  of  similar 
character  in  various  parts  of  the  world.  All  this  is  matter  of 
common  knowledge.  What  has  never  been  fully  appreci¬ 
ated,  except  by  those  who  were  constantly  at  hand,  is  the 
extent  to  which  Mr.  Greenough’s  indefatigable  care,  and 
tact,  and  prudence,  and  enthusiasm  contributed  to  so  noble 
a  result.  For  one  thing,  to  the  end  of  Mr.  Ticknor’s  life, 
the  intimacy  between  them  never  relaxed.  It  is  said  that, 
whenever  Mr.  Ticknor  was  in  Boston,  hardly  a  Sunday  after¬ 
noon  passed  without  an  interview  between  the  elder  friend 
and  the  younger;  and  it  is  probable  that  almost  all  of  these 
cordial  meetings  were  partly  occupied  with  consultations  con¬ 
cerning  the  Public  Library  which  was  so  near  to  the  hearts  of 
both.  Long  after  Mr.  Ticknor’s  death,  indeed,  it  was  Mr. 
Greenough’s  practice  often  to  pass  a  part  of  Sunday  afternoon 
with  Mr.  Ticknor’s  daughter,  who  so  loyally  preserved  her 
father’s  traditions.  Thus  keeping  constantly  in  touch  with 
the  first  impulses  from  which  the  Library  had  sprung,  Mr. 


14 


Greenough  actually  devoted  to  the  details  of  its  management 
hours  of  every  day.  Just  when  his  habits  in  this  matter  grew 
fixed  it  is  hard  to  say  ;  but  during  the  last  ten  or  fifteen  years 
of  his  presidency  they  had  taken  on  marvellous  regularit}r. 
His  mornings  he  devoted  uninterrupted^  to  the  affairs  of  the 
Gas-Light  Company  ;  then  he  would  lunch  at  his  club,  select¬ 
ing  his  fare  with  much  deliberation,  and  supplementing  the 
meal  with  a  single  not  very  large  cigar  ;  then  he  would  pro¬ 
ceed  to  the  Library,  where  in  his  inner  office  he  would  set  to 
work  over  the  innumerable  questions  of  policy,  of  purchase, 
of  management,  of  dealings  with  men  public  and  private, 
which  constantly  arose.  He  would  commonly  emerge,  in  the 
mid  afternoon,  with  a  number  of  new  books  under  his  arm, 
and  with  sundry  booksellers’  catalogues  in  his  pocket.  The 
books  were  his  chief  relaxation  ;  he  read  them  with  astonish¬ 
ing  speed,  and  remembered  them  as  accurately  as  if  he  had 
studied  them.  The  catalogues  he  would  somehow  find  time 
to  run  through,  pencil  in  hand.  In  the  course  of  years  he 
thus  developed  exceptional  knowledge  of  bibliography  and 
of  book-prices.  He  is  said  also  to  have  developed  a  remark¬ 
able  intuitive  knowledge  of  what  the  Library  possessed  and 
what  it  lacked.  No  human  memory,  of  course,  could  con¬ 
sciously  include  a  catalogue  in  which  the  entries  were  rising 
into  the  hundreds  of  thousands  ;  Mr.  Greenough’s  unconscious 
memory,  however,  came  nearer  such  inclusion  than  would 
seem  credible.  An  instance  is  remembered  where  a  friend 
brought  him  two  small  books  concerning  out-of-the-way 
dialects  spoken  by  American  Indians.  He  instantly  declared 
that  he  believed  the  Library  to  possess  one  and  not  the  other; 
and  his  impression  proved  correct. 

A  less  obvious  phase  of  his  work  was  never  generally  rec¬ 
ognized.  As  the  Library  grew,  its  staff  of  employees,  in  every 
grade,  inevitably  increased ;  and  this  included  men  and  women 
of  widely  divergent  degrees  of  character  and  culture.  With 
these,  in  general,  his  relations  became  exceptional.  At  least 
after  his  youthful  days,  he  was  addicted  to  personal  reticence, 
—  by  no  means  the  kind  of  man  who  provokes  a  feeling  of 
intimacy.  On  the  other  hand,  his  fundamental  kindness  of 
temper,  his  thorough  sense  of  justice,  and  his  practical  tact  in 
dealing  with  men  slowly  grew  to  command  unfailing  confi¬ 
dence.  In  more  instances  than  a  few,  it  is  believed,  he  was 


15 

appealed  to  for  advice  concerning  the  private  affairs  of  these 
persons  who  found  themselves  publicly  in  his  employ.  And 
a  few  cases  which  are  definitely  remembered  afford  ground 
for  conjecture  that  there  are  many  such  people  whose  mem¬ 
ories  of  him  are  irradiated  by  a  sense  of  personal  gratitude. 
When  at  last  he  retired  from  office,  the  employees  of  the 
Library  presented  him  with  an  elaborately  engrossed  testi¬ 
monial  of  their  esteem,  which  he  highly  prized.  Such  testi¬ 
monials  are  doubtless  apt  to  be  perfunctory.  In  this  case, 
however,  if  many  private  words  may  be  believed,  every  signa¬ 
ture  was  given  with  eagerness  to  express  a  warmth  of  regard 
which  under*  the  circumstances  could  not  escape  the  limits  of 
formal  phrase. 

Throughout  Mr.  Greenough’s  presidency  the  Library  was 
so  managed  as  to  develop  almost  equally  those  two  phases  of 
its  usefulness  which  might  once  have  seemed  incompatible. 
It  was  a  repository  of  the  higher  learning,  preserving  for 
scholars  and  experts,  and  keeping  freely  at  their  disposal, 
resources  for  minutely  special  study  and  investigation.  It 
was  also  a  free  lending  library,  providing  for  the  people  of 
Boston  an  almost  unlimited  supply  of  general  reading.  In 
each  phase  it  steadily  grew  and  steadily  improved.  Its  publi¬ 
cations  meanwhile  —  its  catalogues  and  handbooks  and  the 
like —  constantly  called  the  attention  of  the  learned  to  its  in¬ 
creasing  riches,  and  reminded  the  simple  of  those  opportunities 
for  wholesome  intellectual  pleasure  which  were  brought  to 
their  very  doors.  In  which  phase  of  the  Library  Mr.  Green  - 
ough  was  more  deeply  interested  it  is  hard  to  say.  He  was  so 
deeply  interested  in  both  that  he  strove  to  advance  both  im¬ 
partially.  And  so  the  Library  grew,  until  its  old  quarters  on 
Boylston  Street  could  no  longer  serve  its  purposes.  Among 
the  last  of  Mr.  Greenough’s  duties  was  an  endeavor  to  secure 
for  the  institution  to  which  he  had  devoted  so  much  of  his  life 
a  new,  permanent  abiding  place,  of  such  character  as  his  years 
of  experience  had  convinced  him  to  be  fitting. 

In  his  private  talk  about  the  new  building,  Mr.  Greenough 
permitted  himself  a  freedom  and  decision  of  expression  all  the 
more  noteworthy  because  he  so  rarely  gave  utterance  to  opin¬ 
ion.  The  structure,  he  believed,  ought  to  be  thoroughly  fire¬ 
proof  ;  it  ought  to  be  commodious  enough  to  provide  for  the 
growth  of  a  century  to  come  ;  it  ought  to  be  planned  through- 


16 


out  with  expert  understanding  of  the  uses  for  which  it  was  to 
be  erected,  and  accordingly  in  close  consultation  with  people 
who  had  learned  by  experience  what  the  public,  scholarly  and 
unlearned  alike,  needed ;  and  finally,  as  a  civic  structure, 
built  at  civic  cost  for  civic  use,  it  ought  to  be  free  from  all 
ostentation  and  extravagance,  owing  its  beauty  to  the  dignity 
of  its  scale,  the  harmony  of  its  proportions,  and  the  precision 
of  its  adaptation  to  its  purpose.  Some  such  plan  as  he  thus 
contemplated  he  hoped  that  he  had  assured  the  City  when  he 
was  compelled  to  retire  from  office.  In  the  matter  of  fire-proof 
construction,  his  principles  prevailed ;  the  other  conditions, 
which  Mr.  Greenough  had  deemed  equally  important,  were 
ultimately  held  less  essential  to  the  public  library  of  an  Amer- 
can  city  than  such  collocations  of  form  and  color,  for  their  own 
sake,  as  should  exemplify  the  taste  of  an  eminent  architect. 
The  result,  familiar  to  us  all,  is  undeniably  splendid  ;  but  so 
long  as  Mr.  Greenough’s  powers  allowed  him  to  observe  its 
growth,  he  observed  it  with  diminishing  satisfaction.  Though, 
as  years  go,  he  was  not  very  old,  he  had  outlived  his  time.  He 
loved  the  thoughtful  simplicity  of  the  past. 

Yet  the  last  days  of  his  consciousness  were  not  all  sadness. 
Throughout  his  long  maturity,  to  the  very  verge  of  his  swiftly 
declining  age,  he  had  preserved  an  unobtrusive  rigidity  of 
habit,  mental  and  physical  alike.  To  the  eye  this  revealed 
itself  in  various  ways.  His  dark  beauty  of  feature,  which  in 
youth  must  have  been  extraordinary,  so  retained  its  alert 
strength  that  when  he  was  seventy  years  old  a  careless  ob¬ 
server  might  have  mistaken  him  for  a  man  still  in  the  full  vigor 
of  life.  His  carriage  was  always  somewhat  careless,  with  that 
sort  of  carelessness,  so  frequently  characteristic  of  elder  New 
England,  which  disdains  external  forms.  His  clothes,  of  which 
he  was  by  no  means  neglectful,  were  never  exactly  in  the 
fashion.  He  never  looked  eccentric,  nor  ever  quite  like 
anybody  else.  This  individuality  of  aspect  corresponded 
with  extreme  fixity  of  personal  behavior.  He  kept  regular 
hours  ;  he  thoughtfully  considered  and  heartily  relished 
what  he  daily  ate  and  drank  and  smoked.  No  one  was  ever 
much  more  free  from  asceticism  on  the  one  hand  or  from 
excess  on  the  other.  He  was  affable  and  voluble  in  talk  ; 
his  acquisitive  mind  combined  with  his  minutely  retentive 
memory  to  enrich  him  with  encyclopedic  stores  of  fact ;  and 


17 


these  he  would  always  impart  freely  to  any  one  who  consulted 
him.  When  it  came  to  expression  of  opinion,  however,  he  was 
more  than  cautious.  The  better  one  knew  him,  it  sometimes 
seemed,  the  less  one  knew  what  he  really  thought.  Not  even 
his  immediate  family,  for  example,  ever  discovered  whether  he 
had  retained  or  discarded  the  inbred  Calvinism  of  his  ancestry 
and  his  childhood.  The  deepest  personal  trait  of  his  later  life 
was  the  solitude  of  his  unforbidding  reticence. 

And  then  came  the  end,  when  his  powers  so  rapidly  failed. 
One  had  grown  to  think  of  him  as  a  man  whose  almost  prema¬ 
ture  development  had  attached  his  affections,  years  and  years 
ago,  to  that  elder  generation  which  had  held  him  an  equal 
friend, —  as  one  whose  heart  had  been  buried  long  before  his 
alert  activity  had  reached  its  limit.  One  found  him,  as  his 
self-control  relaxed,  gentle,  affectionate,  and  tender.  One 
had  grown  used  to  thinking  of  him  as  a  man  so  truly  of  other 
days  that,  when  newer  times  surged  about  him,  he  must  per¬ 
force  find  little  pleasure  except  in  saddening  memories.  One 
found  him  ready  to  take  simple  delight  in  kindly  trivialities. 
One  looked  for  closing  years  of  restless  discontent ;  the  clos¬ 
ing  years  which  came  were  mostly  placid.  An  hour  before 
he  died  his  fingers  were  half-consciously  turning  the  leaves 
of  some  book,  just  as  they  had  done  through  the  thirty- two 
years  of  his  inestimable  civic  service.  By  that  time  his  name, 
never  popularly  known,  was  generally  forgotten.  He  rests  from 
his  labors  now  ;  but  so  long  as  learning  lives  in  New  England 
his  works,  even  though  unrecognized,  shall  follow  him.  Such 
citizens  as  he  justify  our  republic. 


